Brothers use teamwork to build business

FFBUSINESS

PAYSON, Ill. (AP) - When Brent Mast came up with the idea of putting together an auger and a drive-over unit to handle grain, it sounded like something he could use to save time on the family farm.

A second idea building on the first from Brent's brother, Steve, turned into Mast Productions, a Payson business marketing grain handling equipment to farmers and commercial businesses in 34 states, Canada and Germany.

Teamwork by the brothers took the business from prototype in 2001 to sales this year expected to reach 150 to 200 units.

"Neither one of us would have got as far along without the other. It was a good fit," Brent said.

The teamwork and success made Mast Productions stand out in the grain handling business - and to judges of the 13th annual Agribusiness of the Year Award.

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The Quincy Area Chamber of Commerce Agribusiness Committee presents the award each year to an area business that stresses community involvement and has strong ties to agriculture and progressive business practices.

"With two U.S. patents and continually adding new higher capacity units, they serve the needs of grain producers along with the commercial grain sector to speed up grain unloading from semi-tractor hopper bottom trailers. In addition to speed and efficiency, they also deliver convenience and safety to grain handling," Larry Groce, president and senior advisor of Groce and Associates, said in nominating Mast Productions for the award.

The brothers say it was simply innovation built out of necessity.

"Basically a drive-over pit allows grain to be unloaded from a hopper bottom semi-trailer in a way that nothing has to be pushed under the trailer," Brent said. "The big selling point is just convenience."

Using the Masts' patented Pit Express system saves up to five minutes per load - and helps farmers keep up with today's combines harvesting 2,500 bushels - or roughly two semi loads - an hour.

"If you've got to stop and wait for something to happen, there's probably room for improvement," said Steve, who was welding at the age of 12 and built a drive-over pit at 14. "If you're waiting for grain falling out of a truck, it's probably not falling fast enough."

Units produced by the brothers and their eight full-time employees, along with additional summer help, move 5,000 to 30,000 bushels of grain per hour.

"Most of our stuff is sold to farmers wanting to utilize a faster way and easiest way to unload hopper trailers," Steve said. "Nobody's going to come to us and say have you got anything that goes slower. That's how the 30,000 bushel per hour thing got developed. The guy said the faster he unloaded, the happier he was."

Half the company's annual sales come in July, August and September with the biggest areas of interest in North Dakota and South Dakota, where "speed's the name of the game," Steve said. A small, but growing, percentage of the company's production goes to commercial customers to unload rail cars.

"After we had our first prototype out, the next year we sold three. The following year we sold 17, then 34 after that. Then it was a full-time job," Steve said. "We knew the marketplace was out there for the product. Today we've got nearly 800 out there since we started 11 years ago."

The brothers' timing couldn't have been better as more farmers shifted to semis to move grain with less labor and farming posted record profits. Attending a dozen trade shows a year, combined with word of mouth and the Internet, built sales for the equipment.

"One thing Brent says is today's luxury is tomorrow's necessity. That's kind of what we build on," Steve said. "We've got new products we're working on that will bring us to about six different product lines, all variations of the first thing we started on."